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Can I get away with..
My dept has been procrastinating on some upgrades on our FinalCut workstations. We have a handful of G4 towers running FCP4.5 on OSX Panther. Some are 1.25ghz and some are Dual 1.0ghz.
I’ve been hounding them to upgrade to FCP5 for about a year and warning that the hardware is really reaching the ends of viability. I’ve just got them to agree to update the software, but the proposal I gave them is many months old, and therefore based on FCP and Tiger. They tentatively seem willing to buy new machines in the next budget.
We’ve waited so long now that.. here comes Leopard and FCP6. The minimum system requirements are listed as a G4 1.25ghz processor. But does anyone have any idea whether I could get by with a 1.0ghz if we are just doing DV-only/NTSC-only presently? I kinda don’t want to lose the leverage for buying software by now telling them to hold off until they are ready to buy new hardware.
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5 Replies
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It might not even install… dunno how they’d be handling that until they release it. I’d guess you’d have problems though. even with the 1.25 machines… They are at the bottom of the barrel… “just enough” usually results in “Gee it works but…”
It’s time for both, actually… buying the FCS 1 upgrade doesn’t make sense when FCS 2 is here almost. You really need both man… the new machines and the new software. However it can also be argued that if your work is being perfectly done now, why buy a durn thing. If it were me, and you MUST spend the money or lose it, buy the hardware then the software to run it on…?
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
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If your requirements are DV only, why can’t you get them to look at iMacs as a viable upgrade. The performance gains you would get in day to day rendering etc. would more than justify the expense – and the ability to actually use tools like Motion in FCS, which you are just NOT going to get any use out of on those old systems. Really, much of FCS, particularly Motion and DVD Studio Pro will barely run on those G4s…
They make money out of these systems, right? I can’t comprehend how little they must make to flog old systems that hard, and I think it’s short-sighted, since the extra impact a quicker system allows you to make in creative terms more than pays for the hardware. Sorry if I overestimate the decisions they have to make, and I certainly don’t mean to belittle your efforts – but it has to be time to upgrade.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations.
New HD edit/slomo truck on the road this month. Dual FCP systems/6 slomo positions.
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Yeah ultimately our needs won’t just be DV only.. so iMacs are not a long-term solution. It was more a matter of there being X amount of money to be used now and Y to be used next year. So, that being the case, I had made a just made the proposal along the lines of software-now.. get 6 more months out of the G4’s.. then hardware after that.
But this minimum system requirement factor screws that plan up. So it just means more time revising the proposal and getting some eye-rolling from the boss.
One of the upgrade objectives was to insure all machines were running the same version, so at this point I am going to recommend two MacPro’s now, keeping two 1.25 G4’s for tagging/billboards/PSA’s and then retiring the rest.
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[Fongaboo] ”
But this minimum system requirement factor screws that plan up. So it just means more time revising the proposal and getting some eye-rolling from the boss.”I think you need to present this as a positive. You’ve waited this long for the upgrade and now suddenly you have a MUCH more powerful suite of software available and the hardware has gotten much faster as well.
So I would say present this with a positive spin like “I’ve had to revise this proposal because since we last talked about this, Apple is going to going to release a major upgrade to Final Cut Studio next month and just a few weeks ago, they released all new computers as well. So for about the same money, we’re going to get better software and faster machines.”
Something along those lines. I would even say don’t go for the top of the line Octo cores, just go for the Quad’s as they will run solid for the next few years.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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I would also propose to the boss that budget plans be made so that computers and software do not become as outdated as they have currently become.
Most places budget in software upgrades and money to replace computers every couple of years.
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